MOBILE, Alabama – With prosecution witnesses lined up to testify against him, a Chunchula man today decided to accept a prosecution plea bargain offer, admitting that he killed a man who had hired him to remodel his house two years ago.

Law enforcement officials had Charles Gene Dees Jr. in custody on the night of the fatal shooting on an unrelated him charge but let him go before they even realized there had been a murder.

In exchange for the plea, Dees would be sentenced to 20 years in prison. Mobile County Circuit Judge James Wood said he wanted to review a presentence investigation report before approving the deal. He scheduled a sentencing hearing for Jan. 7.

Defense attorney Cindy Powell could not be reached for comment. She told the Call News that her client risked a longer sentence had he gone to trial.

“I thought we had a good self-defense argument,” she said. “But with everything that the DA’s Office had, he thought he’d be better off not taking the risk.”

Blackwood said the family of victim Allan Thomas was satisfied with the outcome. He said the defendant took the deal just before attorneys were to pick the jury.

“I had all the witnesses there ready to go,” he said. “I guess he didn’t like his chances.”

Blackwood said Dees had been living in a shed behind Thomas’ home on North 4th Street in Citronelle for several months. Thomas was paying Dees in prescription pills for the remodeling work, Blackwood said.

The prosecutor said Dees shot Thomas on July 17, 2010, and then stole his pickup truck, an antique coin collection and several hundred dollars in cash. Blackwood said the coins included silver dollars from the 1850s and 1860s.

After the murder, Blackwood said, Dees then went to the homes of two women who were the mothers of his children, giving them some of the money.

Later that night, the father of one of those women went with an intoxicated Dees to a gas station and noticed a gun in the truck. Blackwood said the man saw a Mobile County sheriff’s deputy at the gas station and reported the gun.

Authorities arrested Dees and charged him with having a pistol without a permit. He was out on bail by the time someone discovered Thomas’ body in a reclining chair four days later. The murder weapon turned out not to be the handgun that Dees had in the truck, but investigators eventually linked him to the shooting.